


Jeremy

by poisontaster



Series: AKB Outtakes [7]
Category: Actor RPF, CW Network RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 18:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1991. Jeff finds out more about Jeremy than he ever guessed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jeremy

"Master, you haven't eaten or had anything to drink all day. Please. Just some coffee."

"I don't want it!" Jeff snarls, sweeping the cup away. He rakes one hand and then the other through his hair. "I don't want anything. I just…" He cuts himself off there, before he says too much, before he says, _I just want Jeremy to be okay._

It's still a mystery how this happened, how he got embroiled so deep in a one-night stand, in a random hook-up that he's here, in this hospital, waiting. 

Jeff's own memories are on the other side of this, as a patient. He has no experience as a waiter, a penitent. He's got no patience for it, either, pushing out of his plastic seat to pace the hall again. 

_"Don't call my mom." Jeremy's eyes are huge—not just dilated but wide, afraid. Terrified. The restraints keep him from reaching for Jeff but they don't stop Jeff from taking Jeremy's hand. Jeremy grabs onto him like Jeff is his last line to life. "Please. Whatever happens, don't let them call my mom. She…she can't know this. Don't let her find out, please…"_

_"Yeah, Jer." Jeff can barely get the words out through the tightness of his chest. "Whatever you want. I'll take care of it. I'll take care of everything."_

"I'll take care of everything," Jeff mutters to himself, a half-hysterical laugh hooking on the end. "Jesus."

It's not the money; his shares of Morgan International on top of his grandmother's inheritance gives him the leeway to help out a friend. More than anything, it's the wondering—wondering when Jeremy became important enough for Jeff to not only offer this kind of assistance, but to want to. Wondering when Jeremy became so much more than a casual fuck, when he became Jeff's, one of Jeff's people. 

"Are you Jeff Morgan?"

The woman in front of him looks nearly as tired as Jeff feels, though Jeff bets it looks a lot better on her than it does on him. A lot better. She's wearing a lab coat embroidered with _Dr. Blanchett_ and she has a waxed paper cup in either hand. As he nods, she extends one of the cups to him. "Hope you like cream and sugar," she says, taking a sip from the other cup. "I'm Dr. Blanchett. Cate. You came in with Jeremy Sisto, right?"

Sisto. God, he hadn't even known Jeremy's last name. How long had they been fucking and he hadn't even known Jeremy's last name? "Yeah. Um. Yes." Jeff rubs his hand reflexively down his hip. "Is Jer… Er. Is Jeremy going to be all right?"

"Hmmm." Blanchett's generous mouth twists up on one side. "I'm not Mr. Sisto's medical doctor, I'm a psychiatrist, but yeah, I think he'll be all right. You should really talk to Dr. Lightman about that. I'm here to evaluate Mr. Sisto's mental state. May I ask what, exactly, is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Sisto?"

_"Oh…fuck. That's good, that's so good, sweetheart; take it just like that, yeah…"_

"I…"

Blanchett smiles. "Okay, that's clearly a hard one, let's back it down to something easier. Are you a relative?"

"No."

Blanchett nods and takes another sip of her coffee. "Kind of figured not. You know that means I can't talk to you about Jeremy's diagnosis or his treatment, right? Unless you've got a medical power of attorney or until Mr. Sisto clears you." She squints at him, gesturing with the coffee cup. "You're not his guardian, right? You seem kind of young for it."

"What? His…his what? No. Why would Jeremy need a guardian?"

"Mmm." Blanchett interrupts her sip of coffee, eyebrows quirking. "Because he's seventeen. Do you know…is he an emancipated minor or do you know how to get in touch with his parents?"

"No," Jeff says doubtfully. "He can't be… Seventeen? Really?"

"Oh, so you didn't know?"

"No. I didn't know."

"But you're friends, right?"

Jeff blows his breath out and drags his fingers through his hair, looking everywhere but at Dr. Blanchett. "Yeah, we're friends."

"Friends, or, you know, _friends_?" Blanchett makes a wobbly gesture with one hand. When Jeff pauses over the answer, she sighs, shoulders dropping. "Look, I'm not asking to get you in trouble, okay? I'm asking because your friend isn't doing so great right now and I'm trying to get a handle on it so maybe I can help him." She shakes her short hair back from her face, a gesture that seems more reflexive than necessary, before she tilts her head at him. "You stayed, which means you're either a hell of a nice guy or he's more than a casual fuck…and frankly, you don't look that nice." Her smile takes most of the sting out of the words, but her eyes remain steady on him, weighing, gauging, sifting through the information and coming up with…what? When Jeff's seen that look on his mother's face, his shortcomings are reflected all too easily; with Blanchett, he sees the calculation without being able to tell how the sum comes out.

"I'm not nice," Jeff agrees, scrubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. "I'm a selfish asshole and…and I should've seen this coming way before it got this bad. And, and I didn't…" To his horror, Jeff finds himself choking up, the huge bolus of piss-scared that's been sitting like a stone in his belly rising up, hot and uncomfortable and huge. 

He turns away from her, toward the wall, hands on his hips and head down, breathing through his teeth. 

"Hey." Blanchett puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes without trying to crowd any closer. "Hey, look… You want to see him?"

Jeff takes a big suck of air, tamping it down again, blinking the heat from his eyes. He nods. "Yeah. Yeah."

"All right. Come on." She takes him by the jacket sleeve and tugs. "Look," she says, as she leads him down the hallway, "after we get Jeremy stabilized… Well. You know he's going to need psychiatric help, right?"

"What?" Jeff hates how gluey his voice comes out, that you can still hear the tears in it if you're listening for them. "No. Jeremy… He's not _sick_. He…"

"He's not well," Blanchett replies, an edge surfacing in her voice like the sudden flick of a switchblade. "Well young men don't try to kill themselves."

"Jeremy didn't try to kill himself," Jeff protests.

Blanchett halts in her tracks, leaving Jeff to dance aside awkwardly to keep from cannoning into her. Blanchett wheels around to face Jeff, her earnest, pretty face set in harder, determined lines. "Yes. He did. And if you care about him—and on short acquaintanceship, I think you really do, Mr. Morgan—"

"Jeff," he interrupts, the single concrete thought he can pull from everything. 

She makes an acknowledging nod. "Don't fool yourself. You can put pretty clothes on it, but what happened last night was a suicide attempt. And unless your _friend_ gets some help—some good help—it's going to happen again. And maybe that time, you won't be there to talk him down or call for the ambulance."

Jeremy had looked so alive in that moment, so completely full to bursting and so absolutely gorgeous at the same time; it's hard—impossible—for Jeff to reconcile that with the idea of that life, that brilliant, joyful life, snuffing out. Just the thought of it makes him want to hurl. "What do you want from me?" Jeff asks, his voice scraping bottom.

"Two things. First of all: are you going to stay?" Blanchett arches her brows, widens her eyes. "Are you going to stick this out with him or are you going to bail out when this gets hard? Because don't get me wrong—this is going to get hard."

This is his out, damn near served up to him on a silver platter. Hell, this Blanchett chick would probably prefer it that way, no chance of him corrupting Jeremy any worse than he already has. Jeff's sense of relief is instantaneous, huge, ballooning…

Which is why it makes _absolutely no sense_ when he hears himself saying, "I'm in this for the long haul. Whatever it takes."

Blanchett nods without any indication of whether it's with approval or otherwise. "All right. Next question: can you handle this?"

Jeff doesn't mean to laugh. He doesn't mean to—there are few things he can think of that are less funny than this entire situation—but it comes spilling out of him anyway. "Christ, I don't know!"

"Mmm. That's an honest answer, at least. Full credit for that." Blanchett nods again. "Look, I know this is scary. But I need you to realize that this is a lot scarier for Jeremy. A _lot_ scarier. Because while you can make the choice to be here or not, to be supportive and strong or not, Jeremy doesn't get to make those choices. Because this is his life. And he can't run away from it. Do you understand?"

Jeff doesn't nearly understand what's going on with Jeremy or what he's gotten himself into, but he knows everything there is to know about a life you can't escape from. "Can I see him now?"

"Yeah." Blanchett bites her lip thoughtfully and nods. "Yeah, all right." She turns and leads him down the hall again. 

"He's sedated," Blanchett informs him when they halt again, this time at the door to one of the rooms. "So it's doubtful how lucid he'll be or how much of this he'll remember." She pauses, mouth screwing up a little. "But he's been asking for you."

_"Jeff… Stay with me. Please don't leave me with them. Promise me you won't let them get me, hurt me…they'll hurt me, Jeff, I don't…I don't…I'm scared, please…"_

_"Jer. I'm here. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. No one's going to hurt you."_

"This can go one of two ways," Blanchett tells him. "Right now, Jeremy's on an involuntary hold. That means we have seventy-two hours to determine if he's a danger to himself or others. And, given the circumstances, I think we both know how that's likely to go. I think the best thing for Jeremy would be for him to check himself into a treatment facility—a voluntary hospitalization."

"Is that really necessary?" Jeff asks, startled. "I mean…okay, today was kind of a craz…a bad day. But you're talking about having him committed." He shakes his head. "That's some bad ju-ju right there."

Blanchett chucks her coffee cup into the garbage can resting just inside the hospital room's door before regarding him with cool, pale eyes. "So you really think that this was just…" she waves her hands, "a one time occurrence. And Jeremy's never been a little bit off, a little bit _too_ manic or _too_ depressed before today? Is that what you're saying?"

"No, I…" Jeff breaks off his protest, realizing he's not even a hundred percent sure what he's protesting. "You don't know Jeremy."

"And you know his so well?" Blanchett's mouth quirks up at the corners. If she were a guy, Jeff would probably punch that look off her face, the ugly insinuation out of her mouth, but she's not and so instead, he balls his hands to fists and jams them in his pockets.

"I know Jeremy," Jeff says shortly, ungraciously. 

"Ah," Blanchett says, in the same smug, bullshit voice. "I know you've both been through a lot today and that it's been a real bastard…but I'm not your enemy here. I'm trying to help Jeremy. Just like you."

"Yeah, by locking him up in the psycho ward.!"

Blanchett rolls her eyes. "This isn't _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,_ Mr. Morgan, and I'm not Nurse Ratched." She nods toward the hospital room. "Go on. See your friend. We can talk more about this later. Just…think about what I've said, all right? Think about what's in Jeremy's best interests."

This close, the desire to see Jeremy—to lay his eyes on him, put a hand on him—is overwhelming, intolerable. Much bigger than his stubborn desire to argue the point with Dr. Blanchett. "Yeah, all right."

Blanchett grabs his sleeve before he can slide past her, into the room. "I shouldn't be letting you do this," she reminds him. "You have absolutely no authorization to be here. Don't stay long."

"I won't," Jeff promises. 

Jeremy is still restrained to the bed, looking smaller than Jeff's ever seen him. Now that he's looking for it, it's easy for Jeff to see how young he looks… No. How young he _is_. 

"You asshole," Jeff murmurs, smoothing his palm over Jeremy's shaved head, missing his tangled curls almost viscerally. "You were never going to tell me, were you?"

"Tell you what?" Jeremy's eyes slit, a bare gleam in the half-light. Jeff can tell that Jeremy's not really entirely there, his face soft and vague. "Oh. Hi. Jeff."

Jeff smiles, taking what feels like his first breath in hours. "Hi, sweetheart." He lets his fingers trail down to Jeremy's cheek. "How you feeling?"

"Mmm." Jeremy hums, starting to stretch until the restraints pull him up short. Jeremy lifts his head and blinks owlishly at the restraint around his right wrist. "Huh. Kinky." Jeremy squints up at Jeff. "We gonna fuck?"

Jeff hiccups a laugh. "No. Not right now, Jer." 

"Later?"

Jeff laughs again before leaning over to kiss Jeremy's forehead. "You get some rest, man."

"Hmmm." The hum is more drawn out this time and Jeremy's eyes drift closed. Jeff straightens up and they flick open again, worried, more lucid than the moment before. "Not leaving, are you?" Jeremy gropes for him a second time, only to be brought up short again. 

"No," Jeff promises. "I'm right here. Not going anywhere."


End file.
